1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a passive optical network (PON) system, and in particular to a head-end station for use in such a PON system.
2. Related Art
The present applicant has developed a bit transport system (BTS) for use in a TPON (Telephone on a Passive Optical Network) system. In this BTS, a head-end station broadcasts time division multiple access (TDMA) frames to all the terminations on the network. The transmitted frames include both traffic data and control data. Each termination recognises and responds to an appropriately addressed portion of the data in the broadcast frame and ignores the remainder of the frame.
In the upstream direction, each termination transmits data in a predetermined time slot and the data from the different terminations are assembled at the head-end into a TDMA frame of predetermined format.